Independence Day

Happy New year all. Thanks to everyone who ‘gently prodded’ me about getting it back in gear.

Long time since last blog entry? Yup. What can I say – holidays at the best of times are busy, and if you have young children like we do, you’ll know that it also brings a severe increase in activity of the local TLF (Toddler Liberation Front) cells. Our home has been a haven for this crafty and disarming organization for the past several years, and the new recruits (codename: the twins) seem to have stepped up their mobility this year, as evidenced by a remarkable uptick in the organization’s chatter, and a few very close calls. One day I’ll be able to tell the tale of the Christmas Eve Pasta Offensive, but this is not the time or place.

The long and short of it is that it was easily the most wonderful, and also the most hectic, Christmas season I can ever recall having. Ever seen a 4-year old’s face when she first sees the hoof-strewn mess that Santa’s reindeer made of the cupcakes she left them? Ever had that sense of wonder interrupted as an overactive pair of fifteen month olds exploit the moment of freedom to finally topple the 9-ft. Yuletide Tree crammed into the 8-ft tall family room? Well, then you obviously understand.

New toy for Daddy

At any rate, the season also brought the addition of a new piece of machinery at the toolworks — one that marks a rather nice personal milestone:

The Daedworks’ own metal lathe – a WWII era Montgomery-Ward branded Logan with a 10″ swing and 24″ between centers. I know it’s not specifically a woodworking tool, but it’s significant as it allows me to bring the last outsourced bits of my planes in-house. Until now, I’ve had all the lever cap screws for my bench planes made by the extremely talented Johnny Kleso (known as rarebear to many). You can see a couple of videos Johnny’s posted on YouTube. Well worth a view for anyone interested, especially the Acme threading videos. Johnny’s lathe time is limited, though, and he’s stopped taking outside work with the exception of a couple of his old friends. So I’ve been considering how to move forward for a few months now, and finally decided I should just learn to make ’em myself.

So two days before Christmas, I picked up this Logan and the past two weeks of shop time have been devoted to setting it up, calibrating and aligning everything, and learning the rudiments of turning metal, knurling, and single-point threading. As an added benefit, this acquisition also lets me finally shift to using Acme threading on the lever caps, something that is fairly labor- and time-intensive, and is frankly rather costly to have someone do for you. The learning curve has been pretty steep, but so far I’m happy with the results. Here’s the first screw I’ve finished in the Bronze I prefer to use:

And another shot of the screw, in place in a coffin smoother I finished around Thanksgiving:

I’m not completely satisfied with the knurling at this point, but I think the step to Acme threads makes up for it. As I said, overall I’m quite pleased with the results.

Of course there are other things you can make on a good metal lathe as well…

I’ve freehand-turned a few plane hammers on my wood lathe in the past, but the results with a good metal lathe are really a notch up. This one is also the first time I’ve been able to incorporate a design feature I picked up from Jameel Abraham — a threaded post mount for the wooden head.

There are so many advantages to this, I don’t know where to start. In addition to making it incredibly simple to replace a worn wooden head, I can also keep a couple of replaceable heads in different materials – soft wood, harder wood, and perhaps (if I can work out the details) rawhide, which is the preferred material for adjusting wedges in a miter plane. All in all, a nice secondary benefit; this is easily my favorite of the plane hammers I’ve made over the years.

And now, this:

Next project, which I’m going to document all the way through, is a full-size miter plane based on a beautiful old Towell Miter from the collection of Joel Moskowitz, who
is one of my best secret (or once-secret, I suppose) sources of information.

I am done with most of the basic layout for the plane, which is about 10-1/2″ long with a 2-inch iron and a single-piece sidewall construction. This is going to be the first large-scale mitre plane I’ve done, and it should give me the chance to try out some new ideas. It’s a classic design, and Towell’s cupid’s bow bridges have been the model I use for a while now — they’re superb. Towell’s original, top – the last bridge I did, below it.

More soon, as I get to the serious work of hacksawing and filing. I’ll try to cover everything about the plane as I progress over the coming weeks.

I used a really expensive Acme tap. :). I'm going to take a stab at making my own in the not too distant future, but I got this one from McMaster. Somewhere in the $45 range I think… These are really hard to tap, though, and really need a well-formed two-part tap.

I do purchase most of the larger irons – Ron Hock does custom irons at very reasonable rates, and getting a decent heat treat on blades over 1" or so is difficult without good equipment. The smaller snecked blades, though, I make myself. It's a fairly simple process, and I have some photography of the last bunch I made so I'll put a short entry together on how I do it.

I don't think Ron offers snecks on his blades but you can get a blade from him with a couple of small holes at the tail end that you could use to rivet a sneck on after the fact. I don't think the sneck needs to be hardened, so this is a very viable approach.

Hi Raney,Happy New Year to you too! Glad you had a fun and adventure-filled holiday.

Congratulations on the new toy! Looks great, and looks like you're putting it to very good use. The knurling looks great from what I can see in the pictures, and the threading looks excellent! Can you enlighten me as to why acme threading is superior to standard in this application? Is it purely a strength issue? Thanks for reducing my ignorance in these matters!

And your hammer looks AMAZING. Based on your description, it sounds like a top-notch tool from a purely functional viewpoint. Add to that its thoughtful design and simple beauty beauty, and I think you really have something there! Any plans to sell these, with or without handles, but maybe with a couple replacement heads? I suspect you'd do well with that, if you were of a mind to pursue that market…

Either way, keep having fun in the shop, and I'll look forward to your write-up on the Towell Miter!Andy

Like a lot of things about infill planes, the acme threading is probably a bit on the overkill side from a standpoint of sheer necessity. Also, while the shear strength of conventional NC threads is more than adequate for the forces at play in the lever caps, there is a question of longevity. I suspect that when one is looking at a span of decades (or even centuries) then Acme thread's superior strength probably tends to become more of a functional improvement… and since the cap screws are such an integral part of the design of the planes, I'd prefer to think the screw will last at least as long as the other components.

And of course there is always the aesthetic appeal of Acme threads. I prefer the look of Acme threads by a good margin, especially in Bronze and Stainless steel. The large flat areas of the threads contribute a really nice interplay of reflection and shadow to what is otherwise a somewhat pedestrian part of the plane.

Thanks for the compliment on the hammer. I may do a small run of them from time to time, but I don't really see myself making more than a few here and there…